A Mild Case Of Hemingway
Across the open countryside
Into the walls of rain I ride,
It beats my cheek, drenches my knees,
But I am being what I please.
Thom Gunn
On my 21st birthday cousin Fiona, knowing that taking pictures was my enduring passion, presented me a book that changed my perception of the art and altered my destiny. The World Of Henri Cartier Bresson was a revelation of elegant, acutely observed, monochrome images depicting historic events qas well as intimate human interactions and published with Bresson’s essay explaining his ethos of photo-reporting. It was thrillingly different from the type of work I had been thinking about and making until then and confirmed my longing for a photographer’s life. But how? It was a dream. The gulf was too big between what I was and what I imagined one had to be to become a successful photojournalist. I felt uncertainty as to how one could make a living, a caveat often voiced by sceptical friends when I raised the possibility. Therefore I trudged along a dull path completing a degree in Urban Land Administration and a couple of years as a Chartered Surveyor before reaching a turning point. My dream did not fade, it slumbered until in 1979 it woke with renewed intensity. I was disillusioned with the job I had and wanted the life I dreamed of so with a folio of documentary pictures made during the intervening years I applied to art colleges and was lucky to be offered a place at the celebrated School of Documentary Photography, Newport, Wales, a formative 2 year phase when my interest in politics and current affairs took root, where I discovered an aptitude for journalism and a gift for finding human interest stories and began a project called Thatcher’s Children about British society. I started getting work published in national magazines and newspapers and as soon as the course ended I moved to London and began ‘doing the rounds’ of the picture desks. I didn’t bother with the tabloid sector only broadsheets, magazines and organisations that used documentary photography. Although a few editors responded positively the first year was hand to mouth so much so that for a while I left London and worked as a photographer on a cruise ship using the opportunity to shoot stock pictures in every port we docked at, some of which were in Soviet Union, giving me an unusual set of images to show when I came back to England.
Before going to sea I’d established contacts at the Observer Newspaper and lunched with the picture editor when I returned. It was the start of a relationship that immersed me in a salon of noted photographers, reporters and correspondents, an environment brimful of eclectic influences that I soaked-up thereby gaining some much needed worldliness. Although nourishing at a key stage in my development a single newspaper could not be expected to support every project I wanted to document. I was shooting long photo-essays, smouldering news stories inspired by social trends that were costly to produce and too broad-ranging for the needs of a Sunday paper therefore I had to find other ways to advance my plans. It seemed the best solution was to join an international photo-agency because they syndicated pictures worldwide and through personal representation could introduce a photographer to new clients and markets making it viable to undertake more ambitious projects. I approached different organisations but none of them suited me and I drifted from one agency to another until I was asked to join Network Photographers, a photo collective of like-minded practitioners dedicated to documentary storytelling. Towards the end of the 1980’s I was travelling all over the world chasing news and feature stories and building a solid reputation for distinctive work. There were always deadlines to be met but I tried to spend as much time as practical on every story getting a deeper insight into what was going on and following events as they unfolded.
In 1989 -1990 the cold-war between the Soviet Bloc and Western powers was coming to an end spurred by Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost and perestroika and growing nationalism in Eastern Bloc countries that had abandoned Marxist-Leninist governance. Symbolised by the fall of the Berlin Wall history and political geography in the East were being redefined. Photographers were in high demand to explore social conditions and change in places that had been off limits to western journalists for decades. I was constantly on assignment criss-crossing Eastern Europe, one moment photographing the Velvet Revolution in Prague, the next making a story about radiation poisoning and Uranium mining in Saxony, acid rain in Bohemia and landscape dereliction in Czechoslovakia.
Western news media was keen to celebrate the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and a wave of optimism swept Europe but it was soon blunted in 1991 by the outbreak of civil war in the former-Yugoslavia. I had covered conflict before, troubles in Northern Ireland, civil war in Southern Sudan, turmoil in Haiti, Tamil Tiger insurrection in Sri Lanka, the first Gulf war and the overthrow of President Mengistu’s soviet backed regime in Ethiopia but Yugoslavia was warfare of greater magnitude, extremity and brutality. The Balkans cast a spell on many journalists in the way that Vietnam had for an earlier generation of correspondents. I found myself possessed by the story and addicted to being there. Over 4 years as the war ebbed and flowed I spent weeks in the country witnessing the bloody Moslem/Croat conflict in central Bosnia and the massacre at Ahmici. I went on to document life in besieged Sarajevo for two years, exodus from the UN designated safe-haven Srebrenica, the 1995 Summer/Autumn offensive across the Krajina and the uneasy peace that followed the Dayton Agreement in December that year. I was drawn to recounting history through the lives of people who inadvertently had become its pawns. Hence the theme of my work was about survival. [ it explores the strategies used by people to psychologically and physically survive a siege ].
We don’t choose our passions or how long they last but as the conflict in Bosnia played out I realised that my desire to cover such harrowing news had faded. I felt emotionally exhausted, there was new trouble in neighbouring Kosovo but I decided to take my photography in a different direction. I had projects to finish, particularly work about the Kurds in South-East Turkey but within a year or two I was feeding the magazine market with my own ideas mostly quirky stories about English eccentricity and increasingly getting involved with fashion designers who liked my black and white reportage style. I carried this on work through the 00’s.
In 2003 an anthology of my pictures ‘No Heroes’ was published following my earlier books, ’Bosnia’ ‘Berlin’ and ‘Backstage’ a collaboration with the Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani.
By now I had been on the road as a working photographer for 30 years. While wondering what to do next I was offered a job as Senior Tutor in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the London College of Communication. I welcomed it as a chance to look back on my career and ponder the future.
In photography, no matter what latent talent a person has, there is no substitute for experience. The more you do, the more mistakes you make, the more you master your craft. It is sensible to treat failure as a friend that way it won’t happen again. It is only through shooting continuously that personal style develops. Shoot , edit , reflect. What has worked well? What has not? Gradually you incorporate the ideas that worked best into your way of photographing until you have created your own visual DNA. Individual style ensures the photographer will be noticed by potential clients.
My intention was to chronicle contemporary events. I was a photographer/historian or sometimes advocate of change. I wanted my pictures to grab peoples attention. To accomplish it the images had to amalgamate fact[ information] and form [ geometry ] to engage a viewer aesthetically and emphasize message, an understanding of the moment and its context. If carried out well such a photograph may become memorable evoking history as time passes. Of course the camera needs to be in the hands of an informed observer who selects what to point the lens at and when to release the shutter. Without exception intelligent selection ergo good photography depends on knowledge and understanding of any chosen subject matter be it wildlife, architecture, fashion, landscape or news. Through research one can become relatively expert on almost any subject in quite a short time and thus an intelligent selector. It is a major step towards becoming a successful photographer assuming that you have also mastered your craft technically so that the camera is an instinctive extension of your mind and eye allowing you to respond spontaneously whenever you recognise something visually significant to what you are trying to say.
POSTSCRIPT:
From 2009 I moved away from my earlier way of photographing, from reportage. I still wrestle to shape geometry and fact into an arresting document and to make pictures that seize attention but It is no longer a journalistic quest for truth, it is more playful and abstract but nevertheless a response to reality. Whatever the content, this small rectangle, the photograph remains a potent device through which to reflect on the world.
Roger Hutchings
October 2020
Published in The Big Photo Ezine December 2020